Posted on 08/20/2005 11:18:38 AM PDT by neverdem
SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 19 - T. J. Parsell was a lanky pimple-faced adolescent bent on mischief. So when he found a toy gun one evening in 1978 while wandering home from a high school party, he thought nothing of pointing it at a store clerk and grumbling, "Your money or your life."
He got $50 for what he now calls "a stupid impulsive prank." The incident landed the 17-year-old Parsell in an adult jail, where on his first night, an older inmate spiked his drink with Thorazine and sexually abused and raped him.
"While my friends prepared for our high school prom, I was being gang raped," Mr. Parsell testified on Friday to a Congressional commission investigating prison sexual abuse and rape.
Mr. Parsell, now 45, and a successful software executive who lives on Long Island, was one of six victims of prison rape to relate disturbing accounts with a bipartisan panel of The National Prison Rape Elimination Commission here.
"What they took from me went beyond sex," Mr. Parsell said. "They'd stolen my manhood, my identity and part of my soul."
The panel, which also heard from state and federal legislators, law enforcement and prison officials and mental health experts, has been investigating the prevalence, cause and possible solutions to a problem that many experts say has escalated as the prison system is collapsing. Overcrowding, staff shortages and budget cuts have contributed to an often taboo topic.
"As a society, we have an obligation to protect the people we lock up, even though they have harmed society," the commission chairman, Judge Reggie B. Walton of Federal District Court in Washington, said. "Some people say inmates get what they deserve. But they don't think about the overall impact on society."
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Let's just say it involves being forced to commit an unspeakable act of depravity on another man. Trying to describe it would probably result in a banned account.
That's about the total number of folks on active duty and in the reserve components of the U.S. Armed Forces.
Fine. Send them into Iraq to handle the insurgents. We'll keep America's finest out of harm's way, we'll reduce the population of our societal rejects, and the insurgents will wish they were dealing with the good guys again.
Being a user doesn't get you hard time these days. Being a dealer does. And I don't buy the claim that they're oh-so-innocent. Their money finances organized crime. Ain't nothing "innocent" or "victimless" about that.
" which contributes to industry of murder and slavery thereby making the user and purchaser part of the killing"
Correction - it is prohibition that causes those things.
When prohibition ends, so will it... just like it did re: the alcohol trade after alcohol prohibition ended.
"Let's just say it involves being forced to commit an unspeakable act of depravity on another man."
You mean, that when men are in the joint they force other men to listen to Air America?
" Being a user doesn't get you hard time these days. Being a dealer does. And I don't buy the claim that they're oh-so-innocent. Their money finances organized crime. Ain't nothing "innocent" or "victimless" about that."
Prohibition finances organized crime.
Get ahold of some Chris Rock material on the subject. He goes into a monologue about what "tossing salad" means.
Great. Let's just throw out ALL the laws! Then we won't have any crime! Brilliant!
...not.
How about the guys in Texas who tied a man to the back of their truck and dragged him until death? One of them was sexually abused in prison by black inmates. He claimed it screwed with his mind and had him snap. How much of that is believeable is unclear but let's not deny that taking it up the ass in an unwanted fashion can do things to a person's mind.
"Prisoners get what they deserve, maybe they'll think twice about committing crimes."
You might want to think about that statement. Just the fact that you condoned rape is bad enough. But you're not even considering the impact prison rape has on the rest of society.
John goes to jail, gets raped, and contracts AIDS.
John gets released from prison and has sex with his girlfriend or wife. Now John's partner has contracted AIDS.
John impregnates his partner. The kid is born with AIDS.
As a result of prison rape, one person who was sentenced to prison time got both prison time and a disease that will kill him. Two innocent people, his partner and kid, also got AIDS. And we the taxpayers get to pick up the bill at some point.
You might want to put some thought into your attitude that prison rape is no big deal.
Thanks. Sadly, after reading the rest of the thread to date, it didn't appear to take.
Hollow sanctimony. You know I'm right.
This is just getting silly.
Your point about firearms deserves to be re-iterated. Anyone who owns a gun has a tenuous relationship with legality, especially if they travel with it. There are so many laws and regulations at so many levels it's hard to be in compliance all the time.
A prime example is the "school zone" law, which was struck down but quietly reinstated. How many of you have driven within 1000 feet of a school with a gun in your car lately? If ATF or some other agency decides to set up a roadblock to enforce that statute, you may be in trouble if you get caught by it (I wanted to say "screwed", but the subject matter on this thread would render that decision as being in poor taste).
Prisoners that commit violent felonies should be summarily executed.
Where the hell do you come up with his not taking responsibility? His saying it was a stupid, impulsive prank is not ditching responsibilty, it's calling it like it was. A dumb thing to do.
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